No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history and culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break, with such taut energy, the early twentieth-century taboos surrounding homoerotic desire; no poet before or since has so gracefully melded elegy and irony as the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863Ð1933). Whether advising Odysseus as he returns home to Ithaca or portraying a doomed Marc Antony on the eve of his death, CavafyÕs poetry makes the historical personal Ð and vice versa. He brings to his profound exploration of longing and loneliness, fate and loss, memory and identity the historianÕs assessing eye as well as the poetÕs compassionate heart. Translated by Rae Dalven and with introduction by W H Auden.